Before yesterday’s game, Ryan Speier got sent down to AAA, Denny Bautista called up in his place (in time to get the win yesterday, by the way.)  After the game, Bobby Keppel became just the latest victim, getting DFA’ed just eight days after getting the call from AAA (as did Speier, for that matter.)  In his place steps Alberto Arias, whose next major league appearance will be his first.

Assuming Arias actually pitches for the Rockies in what’s likely to be a brief stint in the majors, what with BK, Rodrigo, and Ramirez all eligible to come off the DL this week, he’ll become the nineteenth pitcher to make an appearance for the Rockies this season.  If that sounds like a lot, well, consider that the Rockies used 24 pitchers all last season — and that’s including September callups Hampson, Field, Jimenez, Bautista, Morillo, and Venafro; throw those out and the Rockies used 18 pitchers all last year.

With four pitchers on the DL, some of this is obviously due to injuries, which wasn’t really a problem last season.  BK Kim missed the first few weeks of the season, and Mike DeJean missed virtually the entire season, but that was it.  About the only thing you can blame on "injuries" last season (pitching-wise) was the utter horror of seeing Zach Day in a Rockies uniform.  Then there was the problem of the Rockies abusing Matt Herges for a week, which forced them to make a move with him after only two games, and then Keppel and Speier having double-digit ERAs.  (Zach McClellan, though, has been fine in seven innings despite opponents hitting .333 against him.  That’s a bit of a surprise.)

So now, it’s Bautista and (probably briefly) Arias time.  Bautista was one of the best pitching prospects in baseball back in 2003, when the Marlins traded him to the Orioles.  Then it was discovered that he was actually two years older than he said he was (don’t you just hate when that happens?)  The Rockies are already his fourth team, and he’s just 26.  It’s still too early in his career to affix the "Quad-A" label to him, but he’s spent parts of the last three seasons in the majors and still hasn’t stuck, with a career 6.48 ERA there despite a 3.84 ERA in the minors.  The book on him is pretty simple: straight high-90s fastball with little control.  Maybe this time he’ll actually stick, I don’t know.  Like I said earlier, he did manage to get a win yesterday.

I really don’t have anything on Arias.  He didn’t even make it in John Sickels’ prospect handbook this season.  What I do know is that he’s 23 years old and has spent the last two seasons as a "swingman" type at Modesto and then Tulsa.  He has pretty decent control and doesn’t strike out a lot of batters.  He may not even see any action, with Ramon Ramirez due to come off the DL on Thursday.  In other words, this seems like one of those "we’re required by MLB rules to have 25 guys on the roster" kind of moves.  It also might be a move on the part of O’Dowd to prevent Hurdle from using Keppel and his 11.25 ERA, I guess.  Anyways, like I said earlier, Arias probably won’t be around for long, but while he’s here he’ll be wearing #44.

Back to my note earlier about Arias being pitcher #19 for the Rockies this season… how is it that we’ve already seen 19 pitchers and yet only fourteen position players have made an appearance?  Other than putting Kaz on the DL, the Rockies haven’t made a single move involving a position player, while they’ve made seven involving pitchers.  Sure, outside of Corpas, Affeldt, Ramirez before he got hurt, and Fuentes (to a lesser extent), nobody in the bullpen has been very good, but the offense hasn’t been good either.  Of course, most of the AAA hitters aren’t off to a hot start, either.  Geez… it seems like such a long season already, and it’s only April.

For those of you who have never taken a law school final — which I’d assume is at least 99 percent of you — well, it might be hard to explain my absence over the last week or so.  Most of you have probably taken high school finals; those are a joke.  A good number of you have probably taken college finals as well, and while I hesitate to call those a joke… hey, I don’t remember setting aside days at a time to study for those.  Law school finals, well, you have to write an essay about basically nothing in particular.  The whole point isn’t to give the professor an answer; it’s to tell him every possible thing that could happen.  Like, suppose I went to my local convenience store, pulled a gun and demanded all the cash in the cash register.  Then I took the money and went to my local drug dealer, who turned out to be a cop.  How many crimes could I potentially be charged with?  What defenses could I raise at trial?  How many years would I be looking at?

Yeah, that’s about what it’s like.

Anyway, not that there’s a lot of news from the last week.  The Rockies lost a bunch of games, but now that’s not really news, is it?  After an early couple of weeks when the pitchers would pitch well, but lose, because the offense didn’t show up, the Rockies pitching staff have evidently decided that if they’re going to lose, they might as well lose spectacularly.  So far it’s 15 runs in two games for the Braves.  Unless we can somehow work a deal where Mike Pelfrey pitches every game against the Rockies, I don’t see how things can get much better.

That’s a bit unfair, though, as aside from only hitting ten homers in 24 games — probably some sort of record for the Rockies, and not a good one — the offense hasn’t been THAT terrible.  Matt Holliday’s .398 batting average quietly leads the majors in the early going, and Todd Helton (remember him?) isn’t far off with a .383 clip.  Helton has struck out just four times in 81 AB this season, and then you throw in 19 walks.  Something’s just clicking with him that hasn’t been the last couple of seasons.  Yeah, the power’s still not back, as he only has one homer, but I’m willing to live with a guy who hits well over .300, draws a ton of walks, and hits for moderate power, like 10-15 homers.  The walks are especially mind-boggling — it’s as if the opposing pitchers are still pitching around Todd like he’s the only power threat the Rockies have, like, say, in 2005.  Apparently they haven’t gotten the memo that Todd isn’t a threat to take them deep any more.

On the other hand, it would be nice if anybody else on the team were hitting better than .275, which is what Yorvit Torrealba’s doing right now.  Chris Iannetta’s season-long slump, coupled with a decent stretch of hitting by Yorvit, has apparently led to Yorvit being the starter behind the dish for the time being.  Next comes Willy Taveras, who’s recovered nicely from his early-season slump to be batting .269 and ending all speculation that Steve Finley should play in center field regularly.  But that .284 SLG is just awful.  Garrett Atkins, at .267, isn’t doing too shabby, but that’s a lot less than we’ve come to expect from him.  Brad Hawpe’s .324 SLG is in Willy Taveras territory.  Troy Tulowitzki is barely hitting the Mendoza line, but after his awful start I guess that’s a good thing, and he HAS homered two straight nights.  It doesn’t hurt his cause that, unlike Iannetta, the two candidates to replace him — Jamey Carroll and Clint Barmes — are even worse (.190 and .105, respectively) and, down at the Springs, .235/.281/.333 isn’t going to have anybody screaming "FREE OMAR QUINTANILLA!"  Speaking of the Springs, Ryan Spilborghs is wasting his time there and probably wondering why the Rockies are carrying Finley’s .156/.208/.267.  Spilly’s four homers in 18 games is just one off the Rockies’ outfielders’ five in 24, and that’s only if you consider John Mabry an outfielder, which is kind of a stretch.

On the mound, surprise of the year is that Rodrigo Lopez having to go on the DL actually hurts the team.  The downgrade from Lopez to Taylor Buchholz really has been a lot, though it’s not quite as much as the downgrade from Lopez to BK Kim — which was apparently the team’s plan until he got hurt, too.  Jeff Francis has stunk so far, and Josh Fogg is, well, Josh Fogg.  Aaron Cook has a 3.18 ERA, four quality starts, including nine innings of one-run ball on the 8th and seven shutout innings on Tuesday — and somehow doesn’t have a win to show for it.  Nor do the Rockies in his starts, in fact, thanks to some shoddy bullpen work and horrific offense.  Maybe that’ll change when he takes the mound today.  Jason Hirsh has been good, though.

The latest bullpen casualty is LaTroy Hawkins, who went on the DL Tuesday with a right elbow inflammation, which could explain his 8.59 ERA.  Or that ERA led the Rockies to just make something up so he could go on the DL, I don’t know.  Anyway, his replacement was Tom Martin, whose ERA may be somewhere in that range as well.  For those keeping score at home, this is the Rockies’ bullpen as of right now: Jeremy Affeldt, Manny Corpas, Brian Fuentes, Bob Keppel, Martin, Zach McClellan, Ryan Speier.  Yeah, and you wonder why we’re in last place.  The really bad news is that there’s really not anyone at Colorado Springs who I’d like to see ahead of some of these guys right now, except maybe Josh Newman.  And I’m not even sure I’d rather have Hawkins and Kim than McClellan and Speier, considering how they pitched when healthy.

Here’s hoping for some wins.  And maybe avoiding the cellar this year.

In wins and losses, our starting rotation is just 3-3.  That’s ten no decisions for the starting staff in sixteen games, and it tells you just how much you can figure out from a pitcher’s wins and losses.

In terms of team wins and losses, the Rockies are 0-4 when Aaron Cook starts.  That’s not what you expect from your staff ace, but he’s been sabotaged by poor run support (three runs per game) and shoddy bullpen work.  Twice Cook was in line to get a win and had it blown by the bullpen; a third time, he went nine innings and gave up one run but got no support from the offense.

On the flipside, the Rockies are 2-1 when Jason Hirsh starts, and he’s also only gotten three runs to work with per game.  They’re also 2-1 when Francis and Lopez start, and 1-1 when Fogg starts.  Mixed in there is BK Kim’s awful start, but that won’t be happening again any time soon.

Lopez is also on the DL, his roster spot claimed by Matt Herges.  This leads me to believe that Taylor Buchholz will be taking Lopez’s spot in the rotation for the time being.  Buchholz has quietly been effective despite his 5.68 ERA.  Small sample sizes can lead to some strange things, and opponents are hitting .393 against him — .423 on balls in play.  Taylor’s probably not going to hold opponents to a .250 BABIP like he did last season, but they’re also probably not going to hit .423 against him for an entire season, either.  He seems like one of those guys who just is more suited to being a starter than a reliever.  Considering that Lopez, Hirsh, and Fogg have turned out better than expected on the young season, I don’t see how we could work him in on a regular basis, but he should be fine as a fill-in until Rodrigo is back.

As for Cook — something’s off here, as his groundball rate is down from the last three seasons.  Since he’s not going to strike out a ton of batters, he needs to keep hitters from elevating the ball, and he hasn’t been doing that.

This weekend the Padres come to town, and tonight it’ll be Josh Fogg against Chris Young.  Fogg’s already faced the Padres once this season, and he pitched well, giving up two runs over six and a third.  Career he’s 2-1 with a 4.74 ERA in seven starts.  Young’s coming off a horrible start in which he didn’t make it out of the third inning, but he’s 3-0 with a 2.97 ERA against the Rockies in his career.  The Padres have a pretty punchless offense, though, so this will probably be a pitcher’s duel.

So for the postmortem… You know, I’ve recently decided that I’m not going to write anything about a game immediately afterwards, since my judgments are usually clouded by emotions based on what I’ve just seen.  So today, as I sit at the law school between classes, I’ve come to the conclusion that, well, my opinion hasn’t changed at all.

Last night’s game was unwatchable from the third inning on.  And not just because the Rockies were losing; no, "losing" doesn’t even begin to describe what went on last night.  Jeff Francis was off his game, having easily the worst start of the season for any Rockies pitcher.  Yes, even worse than BK Kim’s start against the Diamondbacks, well, the day before.  For one thing, Kim was a spot starter, so we can’t really count him as a "starter" in the true sense of the word.  Second, Kim didn’t give up six runs, and you can at least place some blame on his injury that required him to leave the game and later go on the DL.

No, Francis’s line from last night is, well, a lot like the lines from Barry Zito’s first two starts of the season.  Barry instead picked last night to actually pitch like a $126 million pitcher, though the Rockies hitters probably made him look a lot better.  Todd Helton had three hits, Troy Tulowitzki had two, but other than one hit from Brad Hawpe the rest of the Rockies’ offense put up an oh-fer.

As for Kim going on the DL, the Rockies tossed a bit of a curveball and replaced him with Zach McClellan, who was not the first person I would have expected to be called up.  McClellan promptly gave up two hits and an earned run in his major league debut last night, but at least it came at a time when it really didn’t matter rather than, you know, in a one-run game.  No, McClellan merely turned a seven-run Giants lead into an eight-run lead.  Big deal.  Josh Fogg also made a bullpen appearance, which was probably because this was his day to throw on the side, Francis was stinking, and Buchholz wasn’t available after throwing three innings on Sunday.  But this obviously isn’t a permament move to the ‘pen for Fogg; who would replace him?  Kim’s obviously on the DL, the Rockies apparently have decided to cut bait with Brian Lawrence and eat half a mil — after the results of his rehab starts in Colorado Springs, the Rockies decided that eating half a million dollars was a better idea than actually having Lawrence pitch for them — Buchholz probably isn’t going anywhere, and Ubaldo’s off to a slow start for the Sky Sox.

Speaking of bullpen moves, the Rockies did shake things up a bit.  LaTroy Hawkins has been demoted from his eighth-inning role, taking over Ramon Ramirez’s role as the "middle reliever we go to when none of the other guys really fit."  Ramirez and Manny Corpas take over the eighth, with, apparently, McClellan taking over the seventh.  I hope that last night isn’t indicative of his real abilities, or this could be a long season.

                         vs.

Well, tonight we get to see the Rockies take on the most overpaid pitcher in baseball, Barry Zito.  "Overpaid" is a bit unfair, since Zito’s a pretty good pitcher and if I were offered $126 million over seven years with the opportunity to live in San Francisco thrown in, I’d take it right away and worry about the "pitching" part later.  Of course, Zito has looked like anything but a $126 million pitcher so far this season.  In fact, he’s looked much more like the kind of guy you can find on the waiver wire or in AAA when you need somebody, anybody, to go out there and throw five innings when your starter tells you two hours before the game that he ate one too many pork sandwiches the previous night and can’t pitch (mmmm… pork…)  Surely, 0-2 with a 8.18 ERA is not what the Giants are paying for.

There are positives, like the fact that Zito’s only given up one homer this season.  Playing at Annual Name Change Park really helps in that regard.  What doesn’t help is having an old, decrepit defense, particularly in left field.  For a lefty who doesn’t give up a particularly high number of ground balls, having the other Barry in left isn’t helping matters.  There’s also the matter that he doesn’t strike out as many batters as he did earlier in his career, but other than that he’s mostly the same pitcher he was in 2002.  He’s the kind of guy who you can generally count on for 15 wins and an ERA under 4, which I guess is more than you can say for most pitchers.  But still, Barry’s always going to be the kind of guy who relies on his defense, and when the youngest player on that defense is usually over 30, that’s not a good recipe for success.

What’s especially eerie are the comparisons you can make between Zito and another famously overpaid pitcher that Rockies fans are familiar with, Mike Hampton (currently being paid millions of dollars not to pitch for the Rockies, or the Braves for that matter.)  Both had similar strikeout and walk rates the year before signing their deals — 6.15/4.03 for Barry, 6.24/4.09 for Mike.  Both had fluky good seasons relatively early in their career.  Barry had that Cy Young season back in 2002, Hampton went 22-4 with a 2.90 ERA in 1999.  Also, Hampton pitched most of his career prior to signing with Colorado in pitcher-friendly parks, first the Astrodome and then Shea Stadium.  The difference, of course, was that Hampton signed on to play in pre-humidor Coors Field, a pitchers’ graveyard if there ever was one, while Zito’s playing in one of the best pitchers’ parks in the majors.  But we’ll see what happens with that.

That’s what happens tonight, anyway, as Zito makes a start at Coors Field and the two paths collide.  Zito has one career start at Coors in his career, and that was last season, when he pitched seven innings of one-run ball and got a no decision.  Of course, the "one run" came despite the Rockies getting eight hits and four walks that night, a pattern familiar to many Rockies fans.  Zito may not be so lucky tonight, but then again, the Rockies’ offense has exhibited a similar pattern this season, so he very well may.  And in his career, Zito’s 11-17 with a 5.20 ERA in April.

Opposing him tonight will be Jeff Francis, a similar finesse lefty, albeit one who’s not being paid nearly as much money.  Francis is off to a pretty good start to the season, but you kind of have to wonder if he’s really as good as his 2006 numbers made him look.  After all, his BABIP dropped from .339 to .270 while his strikeouts also dropped.  He did do a better job of keeping the ball in the park, though.  Or the humidor did a good job of that for him, I’m not sure.

Little respect for the Rockies from SI, which tends to happen when you’re 5-7 through two weeks of the season and your name isn’t the Yankees.  The good news is that all of the games the Rockies have played so far have been against teams ranked fourth, fifth, and sixth in those rankings, and nine of the twelve games so far have been on the road.  The bad news, of course, is that those are going to be teams they’ll play all year.  Ah, but the Giants check in at #28, four spots below the Rockies.  I’m hoping for a win tonight.  No, check that.  I’m expecting a win.

…okay, not quite.  The Yanks are 5-6, the Rockies are 5-7.  I’m sure, of course, that all the sportswriters out there will notice this and write accordingly.  Or not.

Alyssa Milano has her own MLBlog now, meaning, well, that I’m no longer the best-looking blogger on this site.  If I ever was, that is.  (I was, in my own mind.  But now that Alyssa is here… well, I can’t possibly begin to think of myself as better looking than her.  Even I am not that vain.)  But she’s a Dodgers fan.  Well, nobody’s perfect, right?

Enough of the random thoughts.  The Rockies followed their well-established trend this weekend, winning the first game of a three-game road series against the Diamondbacks, then losing the final two.  With Rodrigo Lopez unable to go, BK Kim got the start, got staked to a 2-0 lead in the first inning, and promptly gave up four runs to give the Diamondbacks the lead right back.  After giving up his second home run of the day to Tony Clark, BK got hurt.  Taylor Buchholz came in and gave up one run over the next 2.2 innings, which kind of makes you wonder why BK got the start and not him.  Of course, Taylor also gave up four hits and three walks, which isn’t exactly encouraging.  But this was quite different from Saturday’s loss, when the bullpen blew a late lead.  Here, it was the starter who got off on the wrong foot, and wasted a decent offensive day from the Rockies.

Kaz Matsui went on the DL and was replaced by Clint Barmes… which is okay, as long as he’s functioning just as a backup.  Once the Hurdle gets ideas about starting him, though, we’re in trouble.

Todd Helton hit his first homer of the season today.  Good job for Todd, who’s really on a roll right now.  We need that roll to continue as the Rockies head back home (finally…) for two games against the Giants.  It’s Francis vs. Zito tomorrow night, and Hirsh vs. Cain on Monday.

                  vs.

I’m thinking I should just say the Rockies have no chance of winning every time they take the field.  Earlier this week, I said that the Rockies beating Brandon Webb with Josh Fogg on the hill wasn’t going to happen.  So of course, it did happen in last night’s 6-3 win.  Fogg was kinda-sorta solid, getting into the sixth inning and giving up three runs, but it was the offense that finally shone.  And without hitting a homer?  In Chase Field?  You gotta be kidding me.  Of course, that’s now twice this season that we’ve bombed Brandon Webb.  Fogg got a no decision, but he’s still 5-0 in his career against the Snakes.

So, after the string of seven straight quality starts, we’ve now got two in a row that weren’t quality starts — but it’s not as though either Hirsh or Fogg got shelled, and now we’ve got Aaron Cook, fresh off a nine-inning, one-run performance against the Padres (in which, somehow, he didn’t get a win.)  Cook really hasn’t been that good in his career against the Diamondbacks, though, going 3-3 with a 5.17 ERA in ten career starts.  That’s including this year’s Opening Day start in which Cook gave up five runs on nine hits and four walks through six innings (though it must be pointed out that he was in line for the win before the bullpen blew it.)  At Chase Field, he’s 1-1 with a 6.46 ERA in four career starts.

Of course, his counterpart, Livan Hernandez, hasn’t had a lot of success against the Rockies: 6-8, 5.00 ERA in 20 career starts.  He did have some success last time out at Coors Field, giving up two runs over seven innings in a no decision.

While the offense was solid last night, major props go out to the bullpen, which came in after Fogg gave up a two-run homer to Eric Byrnes and didn’t give up a run.  Last night’s winner, Jeremy Affeldt, still hasn’t given up a run this season.  Manny Corpas, LaTroy Hawkins, and Brian Fuentes provide a solid back end to nail down wins, though LaTroy still makes everybody at Purple Row sweat when he gets the ball.  Now we just need the offense to play every night like they did last night, and we should be in good shape.

Last night was about the worst offensive performance I’ve ever seen.  Jason Hirsh had one bad inning and paid for it, getting saddled with the loss.

Two hits?  Come on, guys.  (And one of those two was a dribbler off the bat of Iannetta that traveled about forty feet.)  I knew it wasn’t our night when the Rockies loaded the bases with one out in the first inning thanks to three Brad Penny walks and then proceeded to leave all three men on base.  Anything to the outfield would have scored a run, right?  That’s why being a Rockies fan is frustrating sometimes.

Of course, having an off day gives me time to reflect.  We’re 4-5 through nine games of the season.  As in, 1/18 of the way through the season.  We’re 2.5 games out of first place.  It’s certainly not time to hit the panic button yet, and of course we’re probably not going to finish last in the division because the Giants are just awful.  The Diamondbacks finally lost last night, having won six in a row following a 1-2 series in Colorado.  But their record seems awfully inflated on account of playing four games against the Nationals already.  Unlike several other teams with bad records, the Nationals really are that bad.  Except for John Patterson, their starting pitchers would be starting pitchers for the Colorado Springs Sky Sox if they were in the Rockies organization.  Yes, they are that bad.

Besides that, we’ve had the misfortune of playing nine straight on the road after opening with a three-game series at home.  The Rockies have always performed much worse on the road than at home.  That’s been mitigated a bit in recent years by the humidor, but 2-4 on the road against two solid ballclubs is nothing to hang your head about.  Now, the way in which those games were lost is — blowing a late lead against San Diego, completely wasting an excellent start by Aaron Cook, getting shut down by Brett Tomko of all people, and showing no offense whatsoever last night — but remember that the Padres and Dodgers are pretty good teams.  It’s not like we’re taking one of three from, well, the Nationals.

There’s another point, though, to be made about the standings.  Like I said earlier, the Diamondbacks benefitted from playing the Nationals.  Likewise, the Dodgers got a road sweep of the Giants, but they also went 1-2 against the Brewers.  The Padres so far have played six of their nine games at home, and the three on the road were against the Giants.  The Giants apparently just need to throw Matt Morris every day, as he’s responsible for their only two wins of the season.

I’ll admit right now that I’m not very confident about Friday night.  Josh Fogg going against Brandon Webb?  Yeah, with our luck right now, that’s not happening.  Aaron Cook against Livan Hernandez and Rodrigo Lopez against Doug Davis should be winnable games, assuming, of course, that Bad Rodrigo doesn’t choose this time to rear his ugly head.  That Lopez-Davis matchup has happened before, and it resulted in an 11-4 win for the Rockies… of course, the main culprit in allowing those 11 runs (J.D. Durbin) was DFA’ed immediately after that.  But that game was also frustrating for us Rockies fans, similar to how last night’s game was frustrating.  Davis, like Penny last night, was all over the place, yet the Rockies couldn’t really take advantage of it.

The Hardball Times shows pretty clearly that Garrett Atkins has had a run of bad luck to start the season.  91 points off his BABIP for no apparent reason usually means that, well, he’s been hitting a lot of line drives right at people.  Willy Taveras has the same issue, but in his case it’s partly explained by an increase in the percentage of fly balls he hits.  Willy’s not going to hit any homers, so him putting the ball in the air is clearly a bad thing.  On the other hand, Matt Holliday and Brad Hawpe haven’t been unlucky, and they’re not really struggling either.  It just seems that way when Holliday comes up twice in the last two games with the bases loaded and one out, and grounds into a double play the first time, strikes out the second.  But that’s Matt.  For some reason he just seems to hit worse when there are runners on, or the game’s on the line.  (Which makes it a little hard to believe that he was so highly regarded as a high school quarterback…)

Hopefully our luck turns around soon, but at some point you can’t just blame things on luck.  After nine games, though, and the manner in which some of those games have gone, luck’s a pretty good explanation.  But 4-5 isn’t that bad.  Things could be worse.  We could be the Giants.

                     vs.

Okay, I’m still trying to figure this out.  Seven — seven!! — consecutive quality starts by our pitchers, and yet we’re just 4-4 on the season?  Yeah, the bullpen hasn’t been great, but where’s the offense been?  Personally, I think that one of the starters should go out and completely tank a game, giving up six runs in the first inning and say something to the effect of "Hey, guys, I can’t do this by myself."  Look, I’d understand if we were facing great pitchers or something, but we made Brett Tomko look like a Cy Young Award winner last night.  The "Aaron Cook" syndrome (pitchers having great starts, but getting zero support from the offense) appears to have spread to be a staff-wide thing.

You can’t really pin either our hot pitching start or our poor offensive start on the weather, since five of the eight games we’ve played have been in southern California, one of the few places in the country that hasn’t been terribly cold the past week or so.  Tonight Brad Penny takes the mound for the Dodgers.  Oh, joy.

We’re familiar with Brad.  He’s very large (6’4", 260), throws hard, he gives up his share of walks and homers, and he’s probably going to end up on the DL at some point during the year.  He doesn’t strike out as many batters as you’d expect from a power pitcher, though.  One thing he has done in his career is completely own the Rockies, going 10-2 with a 2.76 ERA in 16 career starts.  In fact, the Dodgers in general have owned the Rockies lately, winning every series against us since the start of 2006 and going 16-5 in that time.

Taking the hill for the Rockies is Jason Hirsh, the one part of the Jason Jennings trade that’s actually worked out well for us so far, what with Willy Taveras batting .167 and Taylor Buchholz MIA since appearing in a game last Wednesday.  (Buchholz’s absence is understandable since the starters have been going deep into games and we haven’t need relievers that much, much less a long reliever.)  Hirsh has never faced the Dodgers in his short career, but he did completely dominate the Padres on Friday night in a big W for the Rockies.

On the note of Buchholz, if the starting pitchers continue to pitch well and BK Kim isn’t traded, I think the Rockies could send him to AAA and bring up a hitter to replace him, since the Rockies haven’t really needed 12 pitchers to this point.  But then that "starting pitchers pitching well" could change at any time.  Hopefully the offense picks up before that happens.

                  vs.

A solid win for the Rockies yesterday, though it was marred a bit by injuries to the Dodgers’ starting pitcher (Jason Schmidt) and right fielder (Matt Kemp.)  Of course, I’m not completely sure that either of those injuries had a direct effect on the outcome of the game.  Schmidt was okay but the Rockies still scored a few runs off him before he left the game.  Kemp’s injury while running into the wall on a fly ball to right may have given Jeff Baker an extra base, but I don’t think he would have come up with the catch either way.  Anyways, both of them seem to be okay from all reports and should only be out for a few days at most.

The offense didn’t put on the kind of show Rockies fans have become used to seeing (before the past couple of years or so, anyway) but they did score six runs.  There were some positives.  The Rockies showed the ability to manufacture runs when they aren’t hitting the longball; Atkins had a solo shot off Schmidt in the first, but the other runs came in small-ball fashion.  Willy Taveras finally showed some spark with two hits, including a line-shot double that just missed being a home run by a couple of feet.  Jeff Baker, starting in place of Todd Helton, had three hits and showed that the Rockies probably should give him more playing time than they’re giving him.  And the pitching?  Jeff Francis only made it six quality starts in a row for Rockies pitchers.  The bullpen still concerns me a little bit, however.  Ramon Ramirez and Manny Corpas have been lights out, but the back end is giving me a little bit of heartburn.  Everybody over at Purple Row is harping on LaTroy Hawkins, but few have noticed that Brian Fuentes has an equivalent 9.00 ERA.  The only difference is that Fuentes has given up basically meaningless runs while Hawkins has blown a lead and also given up a run in the tenth inning on Sunday, when giving a run obviously meant losing.  The main counterargument is that Fuentes has proven himself a solid closer over two seasons, while Hawkins was a failure as a closer.  But let’s not forget that Hawkins was also a lights-out setup man in Minnesota for two seasons.  Yeah, Clint Hurdle should certainly not have any ideas about using him in the ninth.  And while you can pin the Opening Day loss on LaTroy, the loss Sunday has more to do with a lack of offensive punch (and, just maybe, leaving Aaron Cook in there too long) than anything LaTroy did.  The other point is that we shouldn’t draw conclusions in the first week of the season.

On to tonight.  Rodrigo Lopez takes the hill for the Rockies.  I’ll admit that as recently as, well, last Wednesday morning I was not at all sold on Rodrigo being our #3 starter.  One seven-inning shutdown of the Diamondbacks later, and I’m, well, a bit more sold.  (Easy, Tom, no conclusions from one week of the season.)  It’s pretty clear that last Wednesday was a showing by Good Rodrigo.  Good Rodrigo pitched in Baltimore in both 2002 and 2004, going 29-18 with a 3.59 ERA.  Bad Rodrigo, his alter ego, was certainly what I expected after he haunted Baltimore last season with a 9-18 record and a 5.90 ERA.  Now, I’m not big on sabermetrics, but one thing I do know is that a pitcher’s performance is usually closely correlated with his peripherals — that is, strikeouts and walks, the two statistics that a pitcher has direct control over.  Bad Rodrigo (2006 Rodrigo) in that respect was little different from Good Rodrigo.  So I’m guessing that a lot of Rodrigo’s trouble in 2006 had to do with luck (or bad defense, depending on your perspective.)  Orioles fans will probably tell you differently, though, but I’m of the opinion that if Rodrigo has more starts like his first one, or at the very least close enough, then we’ve got a steal on our hands.

Or he reverts to Bad Rodrigo tonight.  We’ll see.  But I am hoping to continue this string of quality starts; the fact that we’re 4-2 in that stretch has to do with the offense, the bullpen, and, to a lesser extent, luck.  I wanted to throw something at my TV (er… computer screen) with all the softly-hit balls that dropped in for hits by opposing batters in the first week of the season.  The Rockies, on the other hand, were mostly hitting well-struck balls directly at opposing fielders.

The Dodgers’ starter tonight, Brett Tomko, will be making his first start of the season — and, for that matter, his first start since June 23 of last season.  I never have quite understood the rationale behind sitting your fifth starter until the second week of the season.  Sure, you get an extra start from your purported ace, but this also means that Brett will be pitching for the first time since spring training.  That can’t be good.  We’ll see how that affects him.  Since Brett’s spent four of the last five years playing for our divisional rivals (first the Padres, then the Giants and now the Dodgers) the Rockies are pretty familiar with him.  In his career he’s 6-8 with a 4.05 ERA against us.  That doesn’t necessarily sound great, but we are talking about a pitcher with a career 4.54 ERA.  Tomko’s been around a while and, well, he’s not all that good.  Usually he’s just a guy you send out there every fifth day and hope for the best.  2005 was the last time he was a starter for basically the entire season, and he went just 8-15.  He’s generally pretty hittable but I assume there are stretches when he’s a decent starter.  He averaged a little under six innings per start in 2005.  In short, he’s the Dodgers’ version of Josh Fogg.

This will only be Rodrigo’s second career start (and third appearance) against the Dodgers.  His lone career start against the Dodgers was a gem he pitched in 2002, going 8.2 innings and giving up just two runs on six hits.  Predictably, few current Dodgers have seen much of Rodrigo, though Nomar’s had success against him with the Red Sox (10-for-27 with two homers).  Other than that, no Dodger who’s expected to play tonight has so much as a hit against him.

I think this matchup bodes well for us tonight, and I’m predicting a win.  Go Rockies!